Aunty Firdaus’s Party
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar!
A thousand bodies seemed to swirl around her, beige and brown and red and green and gold.
La illaha ill’Allah!
She could see nothing but people, hear nothing but the singing; she was as fully engulfed in the crowd and the noise and the smell of musk and dirt as the mitochondria to the cell.
Hu Allahu akbar, Allahu abkar!
Everything was like a dream or an optical illusion; a psychedelic blur from a sixties film. She was lost in the throng, except she wasn’t lost at all, because she was a part of the whole and it was a part of her and everything was falling away away away.
Wal illahil hamd!
***
“Where’d you get those?” asked Kim, who was sitting in an armchair reading some book of political theory or other. She had on her reading glasses, which Jenny always thought made her look somewhat austere and not a little unserious, and was peering through them at her in a way which made her want to laugh rather.
“Around,” said Jenny, who opted for a less-divisive smile.
Kim looked at the reasonably-large box in Jenny’s hand.
“I didn’t know you were a great fan of dates,” she said.
“They’re not for me,” said Jenny, leaning down to get some tupperware from the cupboard. “Though I might have one or two. You want one?”
“No thank you,” said Kim. “I always find they get in my teeth rather. Which, in my state, is a rather sorry thing to have happen, I can tell you.”
Jenny grinned.
“Fair enough,” she said, and finished distributing the dates between the cracked plastic boxes. “I’m going to the mall, you want anything?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” said Kim. “Stay safe, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Jenny, pulling her coat on and sticking the tubs in a reusable bag from Ilda. She looked at her watch. “Shit!” she cried. “I’m late for the bus!”
Kim smiled at her friend flying out of the room, pleased that she seemed to have found a little of herself again, and buried herself once more in the merits or otherwise of modern Trotskyism.
***
The smell of settled dust and old wood overwhelmed the room. Everything was tinged with brown or yellow, as though one were looking at the world through an amber prism.
“Salaam aleikum!” she called out, having let herself in (she always did).
“I’m upstairs,” called a voice from above her.
She walked around the ancient books piled higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, in some unknowable order scattered and crammed into every available space. There was little light in the room, and it felt almost like another world, where aeons could pass unhindered on the other side of the quaint little door with the bell whilst inside time gathered dust on the shelves that could probably have done with some airing. There were no customers; there never were.
Jenny pulled herself up the metal curlicued spiral staircase set at the back of the little shop with the rope saying “do not enter” that always seemed just slightly unsafe, enough to feel a little thrill at the journey but not enough to actually think about doing anything about it.
Iskandar was sat at his desk, leant over some book in very poor light.
“Come and look at this,” he said excitedly, without looking up.
Jenny walked over to the old-fashioned desk and the curtain where he was sat and peered over his shoulder. He was poring over a book written in some language of which she wasn’t immediately aware. She pointed out that the language was unfamiliar to her.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, and handed her a sheet of paper from a bright yellow lawyer’s pad covered in neat handwriting. She read down it. It seemed to be some story or other about the development of a society of people, and rather drily-written, at that.
“I still don’t know what I’m looking at,” she laughed.
“It’s the last record of the witch-clans of far Eastern Siberia,” said Iskandar Al-Rahman, who was a historian. “I got this book from an old man in Edinburgh who hadn’t the faintest idea what it was about. It’s really very exciting.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Jenny smiled. She hadn’t the faintest idea what the witch-clans of far Eastern Siberia were, but they sounded interesting. She thought she might seek some out the next day. “Anyway, I brought you these.”
Iskandar took the dates, pleased that she had thought of him.
“Oh!” he said. “Thank you! I’ll put them aside for later.”
“No problem!” said Jenny cheerfully, sitting on an exposed bit of desk and bouncing her legs off of the wood. “How are you doing?”
Iskandar pushed his chair back from the desk a little, and leaned back, stretching.
“Oh, you know,” he said. “Good. Tired. Ramadan gets to you after a while. Everything moves strangely. Slow. But I’m good.”
“Mm,” said Jenny. “That’s good.”
“You’re not fasting, are you?” he said.
“I haven’t for nearly a decade,” said Jenny, and there was a very funny look in her eyes.
Iskandar nodded.
“Do you miss it?” he asked.
Jenny’s legs stopped short mid-bounce.
“Sometimes?” she said, staring into the wall by the door. “I don’t miss being tired and hungry most of the month. There was something about it, though… I left it behind a long while ago.”
Iskandar made some non-committal noise and they sat in silence apart from the occasional car going past, a robin sat in a tree across the road, and the thump-thump, thump-thump of Jenny’s legs against the desk.
“Oh, before I forget,” Jenny said suddenly. “I was talking to one of my aunts the other day about you – she’s lovely, you’d like her – and she said if you liked you could come to her house on Eid – she always throws the most magnificent parties. Do say yes, it’d be lovely to have you.”
“Uh,” said Iskandar, whose immediate thought was how busy and noisy and full of new people it would be. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
It did sound nice, just… a lot of effort. He didn’t know that he could be bothered. No, he thought, but he really ought to make an effort to get out more. But parties where he didn’t know anyone were always so dreadfully excruciating. But perhaps he’d make some friends. He could really do with some friends. Maybe, maybe he’d meet a nice young man and they’d get talking and – but no, he’d probably just end up standing awkwardly at the side, picking at food he felt slightly selfish for taking, trying to avoid the crowds of people who all knew each other so very well. Anyway, he shouldn’t be thinking about this at all; he had a guest who ought to be being entertained. He remembered something.
“Are you… doing alright?” Iskandar asked. “With… Laura and everything?”
“Yeah,” said Jenny, smiling oddly. “Course I am! Things’re good, life’s good, everything’s good. I’m just tickety-boo, I am.”
Iskandar thought this not entirely conclusive evidence in that direction, and indeed from her tone of voice took it in the other direction, but said nothing, instead choosing to look at her strangely. He didn’t quite know how or why he was looking at her in that manner. He thought he probably oughtn’t to be. He didn’t know what to say. He wished he were better at conversation. It was very awkward, this sitting in silence without saying all the things one thought of saying when one wasn’t in active conversation. He thought it would be nice if he were the sort of person who could enter a conversation and hold it and talk about all sorts of interesting and heartfelt things. He wished he were.
“I should probably be heading off, then,” said Jenny at last, who seemed to also be beset with this problem, somehow, despite how she seemed to talk dictators off roofs every weekend. Iskandar wished he were like Jenny. He didn’t envy her the whole fiasco with Laura, but, he thought, at least she had found someone. But no, it wasn’t good to think like that. He refocused himself on the conversation.
“Thank you for the dates,” he said, as Jenny pulled herself off of the desk and walked over to the door. He didn’t know how long they’d been there; it could have been two minutes or an hour. Well, he thought, now he could get back to the witch-clans. It was really dreadfully exciting.
“You’re very welcome,” smiled Jenny, as they came to the stairs.
They processed down the rickety metal staircase like monks descending into the bowels of the earth, or angels walking down to earth from heaven, into the bookshop that never had any visitors.
“You know,” said Iskandar, as Jenny reached the door, “you’d be very welcome to come over one of these days for iftar, if you wanted.”
“Maybe,” said Jenny, who looked to be in a strange sort of dream.
“Well,” said Iskandar, “just call me up if you do and I’ll prepare something.”
Jenny, turned, smiling, at the door.
“Thanks,” she said, then she breezed out to the sound of the tinkling bell.
It was raining. She pulled her hood up (she didn’t feel like washing her hair that evening). She darted, grinning, from tree to tree as though she were a bird trying to keep out of the sight of a predator. The rain, of course, still graced her, and ran along her back in great rivulets, long white tear-marks on the dark green jacket. Aunty Firdaus lived only a few streets away, she knew, so she went in that direction, hopping between the puddles in the rain coming down and down and down from the sky.
She didn’t stay long with her favourite aunt; she had to get the bus and so only dropped the dates off quickly with the beaming face, though she didn’t escape without a box of leftover samosas to take home with her (which she was hardly going to complain about; Aunty Firdaus made the best samosas). The bus rattled along, misted-up windows obscuring the outside. It smelt rather unpleasant that day; it often did when it was wet. Jenny ignored it and let her mind go blank as she tapped her fingers idly on her thighs, listening to the echoes of other worlds rattling about between her ears. Thou art a demon, Grallyx, and a foul one, but thy talons and fangs shall no more weather my sword than a shack of straw and sticks will weather the storm off the sea… Look, ma’am, I really don’t want to upset you, but I’m fairly sure that air vent’s filled with poisonous gas. Yes, I’m sure the board of directors assured you that you wouldn’t come to any harm, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in all my years it’s to never trust large corporations… Mm, this is damn good toast. What’s that, Harry? Another murder? Shit… Ah, there was the stop. She pulled herself up, and walked on down the moving bus, feeling it shift underneath her feet, and jolted at its stopping.
“Thank you!” she said to the bus driver, smiling.
The rain had stopped on the journey, and the sun come out, making everything seem fresh and bright. She walked up the hill a bit and then she was at the little beige-painted pebble-dashed terrace on the slope over the river which was as familiar to her as the back of her eyes. She pushed the gate open. Her father was knelt in the garden tending to a somewhat sorry-looking rose bush.
“There’s an aphid infestation on this,” he said, without looking up. “Dreadful business. And this weather’s no good for ladybirds. I don’t know what I’m going to do, I really don’t.” He looked up at Jenny, smiling suddenly. “Your mother gave me this rose bush, you know. The very year we met. And we planted it in this spot together so that it could get some sun. Dear me. I don’t know. Well, salaam aleikum, beloved. How are you?”
Jenny bent over and hugged her father, hard.
“I’m good,” she said, smelling his aftershave and the earth on his hands (he had been weeding). “Brought you some dates.”
“Oh, lovely!” he said. “Just let me wash my hands and I’ll bring them inside.”
“No need,” said Jenny. “I’ll pop in and leave them on the kitchen table. Oh, could you give some to Uncle Tariq, Uncle Zaid, and Uncle Mustafa when you see them next at the mosque? I’ve been to Aunty Firdaus’s already and to Iskandar’s, but Julie wanted to meet in town for some reason or another – well, she’s probably broken up with her boyfriend again, you know what she’s like, but still – and I’ve got work this afternoon.”
Adam Everywhere grinned in a manner that anyone familiar with Jenny would have immediately recognised.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I’ll sort it, don’t worry.”
“Thanks, dad,” said Jenny, kissing him on the head, and popped into the house to deposit the tupperware on the table, the same table she had produced reams and reams of homework and childhood drawings and poster paintings and strange concoctions of mud and sticks and pinecones on, the same table that every night her family had sat to eat their dinner on, the same table where, nearly fifteen years ago now, a note had once sat from her mother… But that was a long way in the past now. She popped some bread into the toaster, and got herself a plate out. Her excursion had made her peckish, and the sun had put her in the mood for a nice cheery mid-morning snack.
Out popped the toast from the toaster, on went the butter from the knife, and out popped Jenny Everywhere from the house holding a piece of toast in her mouth that she thought was the most delicious thing in all the world, the colour of the sunshine on the wet pavement and her father’s rapidly-greying hair and beard.
“I hope you cleared up all the crumbs from that, missus,” said her father as soon as she emerged.
Jenny Everywhere sighed dramatically, then went back into the kitchen to clear up the crumbs. She pulled her shoes on again for a second time, toast still in her mouth, and emerged back into the garden, where the sun had briefly ventured behind a large grey cloud.
“Thank you,” said her father. “If you’re stopping by the mall could you get me some of my face cream, please? I’m nearly out.”
“What brand is it?” asked Jenny.
“Oh, never mind,” Adam said. “I’ll pop into town tomorrow and get it myself. No, you know what I was going to say? I was going to say, tell your sister it’ll all work out right in the end.”
Jenny smiled, and looked at the sun creeping slowly up the hill from the bottom of the road.
“I will,” she said. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” said her father, and they hugged, slightly awkwardly on his part so as not to get mud on her coat.
Jenny sauntered out the gate, hands in her pockets and without the bag she had started her journey with, through the town which was a great patchwork of sun and shade, right from the sea to the hills, with the sounds of intergalactic war and a party at Athens ringing unusually loud in her head as she made her way through the dappled sodden streets to the town centre.
It wasn’t busy; market day was every day but Thursdays, and it was a Thursday. She wove her way through the town streets where one or two or three people stood around in little groups speckled across the town centre, or walked through shops looking at such and such a thing.
She and Julie had agreed to meet by the church outside the mall, St Martha’s or something it was. Julie was sitting on the low wall that divided the churchyard from the street, and cigarette smoke wafted from her in clouds, curling amber in the sun like a river in the air. When she saw Jenny approaching, she dropped her cigarette on the floor and rose to hug her sister.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”
“That’s fine,” said Jenny, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the smoke. “You’ll ruin your lungs doing that,” she said disapprovingly, taking a seat on the low wall and pulling her feet up to perch on the edge so that her knees were tucked into herself.
“Fine words from Miss I-just-got-back-from-fighting-off-a-horde-of-zombie-aliens-and-they-nearly-killed-me,” sniffed Julie with a wry smile.
A woman with a dog and a very prim hat walked by.
“That’s different,” said Jenny defensively. “Zombie aliens need fighting off, otherwise a lot of people are going to be miserable.”
“And cigarettes need to be smoked,” said Julie. “Otherwise I’m going to be miserable. Anyway, that’s not why you do it, though, really. You do it cause you think fighting zombie aliens is fun. And I smoke cause I think it’s fun. So it goes.”
Jenny made some protesting noises but couldn’t really mount a defence, nor did she really want to.
“Anyway,” she said, eyeing up a homeless man who was sat outside a shop across the street. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Oh,” said Julie, and seemed to deflate rather, though she kept the same devil-may-care expression about her face. “It’s Jimmy.”
Jenny adopted a vaguely sympathetic look, and folded her arms, letting her legs down and crossing one over the other.
“What about Jimmy?” she asked.
“I think he’s gone mad,” said Julie candidly. “Well, I came home the other day, only slightly drunk, in the most darling new dress, you ought to have seen it, but anyway, there I am, and I find him pacing up and down in the kitchen like a lunatic, so naturally I ask him what’s the matter, and he says he’s got something to tell me, and that he would have told me earlier if I – hm – if I “weren’t so damn emotionally distant”… well, what does he know about it? Three months we were together and he never once asked me how I was, it was all him him him, I don’t know. Well I told him that quite decidedly, and that he should stop making everything about himself all the time, and he got very frustrated at that and told me a load of bullshit about being a sort of time-travelling clone thing, a complete load of hackneyed sci-fi baloney, and I told him to stop making shit up and tell me what he actually wanted to tell me, cause you know he’s liable to make stuff up when he wants to escape responsibility. Well, the stupid cunt had only gone and spent all his paycheck on bloody Lego, of all things, and so hadn’t anything to pay the rent with. Well, I told him to shove his Lego up his fucking arse, and got the hell out of there. And good riddance! He weren’t much down there anyway, I can tell you that now. And always nagging, nagging nagging nagging. He couldn’t even pay the bloody rent, I tell you!”
Jenny listened to this ramble with what she considered to be appropriate amounts sympathy and alarm.
“Gosh!” she said, when Julie had finished, then a moment later: “It’s funny him having such a similar surname to us, when ours is so unusual, isn’t it? I mean ‘Anytime’, ‘Anywhere’, it’s like there’s some sort of conspiracy.”
Julie was looking at her with exactly the same expression as she had conducted herself with the rest of the day, only now with a single eyebrow raised.
“I mean I’m very sorry to hear it,” she said. “He sounds like a right bastard. It’s just… you don’t half get through them quickly.”
“Well,” said Julie, fishing another cigarette out of her pocket and lighting it. “Such is the curse of the attractive woman.” She looked up, fag in her mouth. “Talking makes me hungry,” she proclaimed. “Let’s go to the bakery.”
Jenny grinned, and the sisters got up and walked along the road.
“You seen your mum much lately?” Jenny asked.
“Nah,” said Julie. “The old hag’s up and gone to Australia, for some bloody reason. I mean, I like a bit of sun as much as the next person, but really? Australia? And nary a thought for her only daughter, as per usual.”
Jenny made a sympathetic clicking noise in her mouth.
“That’s a shame,” she said. “I really thought you were getting on better.”
Julie grinned.
“Nah,” she said. “Stupid bitch.”
“Me or your mum?” asked Jenny.
“My good for nothing transphobic whore of a mother, of course, my dear,” said Julie, walking with the slight affectation she always got when she was irritated. “Anyway. Bakery.”
The smell of baking bread tickled the nostrils and warmed the senses. The bakery physically warmed them too, it being very pleasant inside from all the ovens, and not too warm outside, despite the sun.
“You want anything?” asked Julie, as she approached the counter with a pasty.
“Oh, no thanks,” said Jenny, smiling. “I had some toast at dad’s. Which reminds me,” she continued as they walked out into the waiting sunlight. “He said to tell you that everything’d be alright in the end.”
Julie bit into her pasty, which did actually seem very nice.
“Sentimental fool,” she said through the crumbs.
Jenny put her arm through her sister’s, and the pair walked along the high street, under dilapidated theatres and Ilda Conveniences and florist’s and greengrocer’s and pharmacist’s and little Asian shops selling all manner of things stuffed with E-numbers. I wish I had a sister, said a voice in her head. I wish my sister wouldn’t keep trying to kill me, said another. I wish I knew my sister’s name, said a third. She wondered why there were so many echoes of other realities between her ears that day.
“You coming to Aunty Firdaus’s Eid party?” she asked (it was on her mind).
Julie chewed her pasty thoughtfully.
“Well,” she said. “I’m not exactly their crowd, am I? What with my, well, you know.”
“Aunty Firdaus won’t mind,” said Jenny. “And I’m sure they’d all love to have you.”
“Hardly all of them,” said Julie. “I’ll just be an eyesore, I’m sure. Well, maybe. We’ll see.”
Jenny smiled.
“Good,” she said.
Julie looked at her watch.
“D’oh,” she said. “Gotta go. My shift starts in twenty minutes and by the time I’ve changed there’ll be no time. Sorry, Jen.”
“No worries,” said Jenny, and the sisters hugged. “Stay safe,” she said.
“Never,” said Julie, grinning, and walked off in the direction of her house.
Jenny sniffed. Hm. Well. She’d had enough of this world. She was so very tired that she thought she might cry, but didn’t. She’d had enough of people, at least people she knew. Everything seemed strange and disconnected from her. She thought she might faint – on the one hand it wouldn’t be very feminist of her but on the other it felt a pleasingly romantic idea. But no, there were only people blurring about her like strange black smudges on an oil painting, and the sound of machinery operating for some reason or another, and the shifting of traffic, and the bickering seagulls, and the strange greyness of the pavement and the grit and the dust and everything. She couldn’t marry reality with what her eyes told her. She had walked along this street a hundred times, this same street, yet it seemed as unfamiliar to her as a distant planet. Her eyelids screamed at her. She realised she hadn’t been blinking. She blinked hard then, held her eyes tight shut as though they were the only things keeping her from falling a thousand miles down into the stomach of the earth, and there was only the shifting colours behind the blackness of her eyes. Focusing on the colours, she shifted out of reality like a butterfly from a marigold and was gone.
***
She looked at the prayer mat. It was old. She thought it had belonged to her grandfather, but maybe it hadn’t. She laid it out in the direction of the qibla. Kim was asleep in the next room, so she moved silently, quickly but haltingly. At the top of her wardrobe was an old hijab. She pulled it down clumsily from its curled-up little corner there and draped it over her head like it was her mother’s eyes. She watched in the mirror as it went on, covering up her short, wiry hair. She didn’t recognise the woman that looked at her from the mirror. No, that was wrong: she recognised the woman that looked at her from the mirror, and what’s more she recognised it as her. It was just… something. She didn’t know what. The hijab fit perfectly. It went with her t-shirt, the colours making a rather pleasing effect. She changed out of her jeans and into loose-fitting trousers. That only exacerbated the unidentified effect. It seemed… right, in a way. She didn’t know how. Well.
She stood facing the qibla. She raised her hands to her ears. “Allahu akbar,” she breathed. God is great. That’s what that meant. Yeah, awesome, said a voice in her head. God. Great guy. Love God. He’s a really great fellow, just an awesome dude.
You know that’s not the sort of great it means, she said in reply, but she stopped going through the motions of praying, and sat down heavily on the mat. She pulled her hijab off. “Ugh,” she said.
She didn’t believe in God. She hadn’t believed in God since she was very young. So why did it bother her that she couldn’t pray?
It didn’t really matter whether God was real or not. It didn’t really matter whether she believed God was real or not. Nothing really mattered, she supposed.
Except toast. Toast mattered. Especially when it was all crunchy on one side and soft and warm and buttery on the other. She threw her jeans back on and went back into the kitchen to the toaster. But it bothered her as she warmed her hands with the toasting bread, and she couldn’t for the life of her think why.
***
It was evident to all and sundry that a party was in progress: neighbours, friends, dogs pissing under trees, stray cats, passing alien invaders all could see the cars people clothes music smells, but Aunty Firdaus cared not one jot what anyone thought, and it showed in her little satisfied smile, largely concentrated in her eyes but also present in the pursed curve of her mouth as she hugged friends, relations, colleagues, children and people-who-just-happened-to-be-in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time. Jenny had brought a great big bowl of salad that she had spent the morning convincing the sou-chef of the Sanctimonious Soul-Cell of Saccerdot to make and the previous morning convincing Kim to let her have the big salad bowl to put it in, and she put it on the big table at the side of the living room where the most tremendous display of food was arrayed and children hung about picking cheese and onion crisps out of bowls and dropping crumbs on the carpets like rainclouds. People thronged like silt in the heaving tide, this way and that.
Jenny ducked under arms, over legs, through waving glasses and gesticulating eyebrows to where two of her aunties sat like queens of state on official visits, sitting on high-backed blue-cushioned chairs nursing cups of tea. Aunty Ayesha was big, black, beautiful and beaming, and when she saw Jenny her grin stretched from ear to ear. Aunty Zuleika was tall, white, thin, and regal, and the skin stretched between her bones like a taut balloon. Jenny wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the two apart; the two mismatched women were completely inseparable.
“Salaam aleikum!” she called out. “Eid mubarak!”
“Oh, Eid mubarak, darling!” cried Aunty Ayesha, and embraced her.
“Eid mubarak,” said Aunty Zuleika, and offered her cheek. Jenny gave it a cheery little peck and sat on a chair which luckily happened to be just there, rocking back and forth on it excitedly.
Aunty Zuleika sipped her tea primly. Before meeting Uncle Mustafa she had been married to quite a wealthy naval officer by the name of Alistair Lombard-Bridgeworth who had been even more insistent on absolute perfection – ironically enough he had died from sepsis after shaving with a rusty razor blade. She later recalled that she had been fairly apathetic at the news of his death, and taken a certain grim satisfaction to seeing to his affairs. It turned out he had, in secret, gambled and drunk so much that he was thoroughly in debt by the time of his death, and there was nothing left over for Zuleika, who had got a job at a greengrocer’s, keeping the name as she quite liked the sound of it and had even less love for her father than Brigadier Lombard-Bridgeworth, where she met Uncle Mustafa and discovered Islam. (Uncle Mustafa was – well, he was nice. All the uncles sort of faded into the background in comparison to the great army of aunties.) She said that she had not cried at his death for two whole years, and when she did felt rather annoyed at it, even as there was a satisfaction to it. After that she was quite free of the man, though, she said, and so was quite pleased to take Uncle Mustafa’s surname and become Zuleika Abdulrahman. She had a certain thing about surnames, and, upon first learning about it, went on at some length about Jenny’s family’s. She said she liked the way they carried stories in them. Yes. That was Aunty Zuleika. She never had a finger out of place, but every so often she’d come out with something that’d make you go “huh” and look at her, not even in a new light but with some interest. And somehow this woman, who ordered her plates in alphabetical order by manufacturer and nearly never raised her voice above a dignified murmur, was inseparable from the great, flamboyant mess of Aunty Ayesha, whose house was an explosion of colour and unwashed laundry and toys and books shoved higgledy-piggledy into any which place, who had been seventeen odd different things at seventeen odd different times, whose cups were all completely mismatched, bought individually at jumble sales. These were some of the woman whom Jenny had grown up with, and been, to some extent, brought up by, and they were who she was now engaged in a long protracted discussion of such and such a frivolous thing, or who said what at whose wedding, or how Wadia was getting on with her studies, Aunty Ayesha’s sharp laugh snapping through the hustle and bustle of the room like a firecracker. It was so nice, she thought, to talk with people one loved, like hugging a warm cup of tea to one’s stomach.
At length Aunty Firdaus called on Jenny to come help sort out the sufra, and she said goodbye to the Laurel-and-Hardy aunties and came immediately face to face with Aunty Aziza.
Aunty Aziza looked her up and down, and sniffed deeply. Her face, Jenny always thought, looked rather comically like a frog’s, and it was eternally screwed up in a frown.
“What for’re you wearing trousers, huh?” she said. “You dressing like a man? Haram! You will become an agent of the Shaytaan, huh, bring shame to your father! I don’t know. You will kill that man some day, by Allah!”
(That man was in the next room, merrily cooking rice and talking to Aunty Habiba, looking very much alive.)
“Sorry, Aunty Aziza,” grinned Jenny. “I’ve got to go help set out the mat for food. Eid mubarak!”
“Hmph!” sniffed Aunty Aziza, and made her way over to the food table (she was awfully fond of samosas).
Jenny had no sooner made her way over to the door by where Aunty Firdaus was when she saw somebody move awkwardly into the room. She grinned broadly.
“Iskandar!” she called, waving.
He sidled his way over to her looking as though he were in imminent danger of being arrested by armed police for third degree murder.
“Oho!” said Aunty Firdaus, looking just exactly how somebody saying “Oho!” ought to look. “So this is your friend, habibti? Isn’t he pretty? Such lovely hair!”
“I’m a lesbian, aunty,” said Jenny, just as Iskandar was hastily saying, “Oh, I’m gay.” (He looked rather defensive at this, and mildly apprehensive, but he was relieved by Jenny’s confidence and Aunty Firdaus’s casualness at this revelation. Aunty Aziza at this had in fact cried “Haram! Spawn of Shaytaan!” but she had had a samosa in her mouth so nobody had heard her.)
“Well,” said Aunty Firdaus, pragmatically. “You never know.” She had a thought. “Iskandar,” she said. “You’re an archivist, aren’t you? I must introduce you to Afifa…”
And she whisked the young man off in a flurry of smiles and billowing scarves, leaving Jenny and her father (who had emerged from the with misted-up glasses and mucked-up hair) to figure out how to clear enough space in the middle of the room to put the mat down so that the big pots of curry and rice could go down.
“Actually,” said Aunty Firdaus, appearing behind them all at once whilst they were staring at the massed hordes in bemused puzzlement, leading the two to jump out of their skins both at once. “It’s dhuhr time and it’ll be late once we’ve eaten. Let’s pray first. I’ll get Tariq to call the adhaan, and we can set out the prayer mats and leave the sufra till afterwards.”
Jenny made her excuses, and moved through the throng in great confusion, around bodies arms eyes legs to the stairs, which she walked up slowly, as if in a dream. Into the little bathroom she went and locked the door. She looked at herself in the mirror above the sink. Well, she was a bit of a mess, wasn’t she. She wanted to scream. She didn’t know why. Out through the tiny semi-transparent window – which was open – she could hear the sound of children playing. There was sun hitting the top of it, but it didn’t go in the room. Through the chink between window and frame she could see laundry billowing in the sun, knickers and bras and t-shirts and sheets, red and white and blue like the Union Jack. She seemed to laugh slowly, under her breath.
She remembered last Eid, the last party here. Laura had wanted to come. Laura never wanted to go to parties or out or anywhere, really, unless it was the mechanics shop or the mad scientists’ convention. But she had wanted to come to Aunty Firdaus’s Eid party. Jenny had been embarrassed. She hadn’t wanted her aunts and uncles to know of the relationship. She certainly hadn’t wanted to talk to Aunty Firdaus about it beforehand. But Laura had wanted to come. And she had told her there wasn’t any room.
Laura had seemed quite relieved at that, mind, and happy to go back to her incredible theories and never-quite-perfect formulas. But Jenny had gone to the party, and every moment she was there she was thinking of Laura, and every time she ate a pakora she had been wracked with guilt and every time she had had a conversation the thing foremost in her mind had been how much more interesting a conversation it would’ve been with Laura. Eventually she had ended up in this very bathroom and standing like she was now, feeling nearly as strange. She had rung Laura up and Laura had asked what was the matter and Jenny had cried and said everything that had happened and Laura had been so very gentle, gentler than anything, and told her everything would be alright, that it was alright, that all was forgiven and no harm was done and there was no point getting so worked up over a little thing like that.
Jenny had her phone out in front of her. There, in her contacts, the first still, in fact, was Laura’s number. With trembling fingers, she pressed the button to dial. It rang. And it rang. And it rang. Then it went silent. Laura didn’t answer. Jenny didn’t cry her heart out. Laura didn’t reassure her. Jenny just sat down heavily on the toilet lid and felt very strange indeed. She put the phone back into the pocket of her jeans.
She looked at herself in the mirror above the sink. She thought the other her very strange-looking. Except, she reminded herself, it wasn’t another her at all, it was just a reflection. Though, of course, she of all people knew the difference was fairly thin.
“Hello,” she said at it, experimentally, just in case. “How are you? Must be pretty lonely in that mirror all by yourself, huh?”
The mirror-her’s mouth moved in time with hers. Nothing happened. She felt very foolish all of a sudden. Talking to a mirror? She really must be going a bit mad.
She sighed. It was as though she were in a different world. Actually, she’d been to an awful lot of different worlds, and this wasn’t like any of them. It was like she was in the same world. And that was somehow stranger and more off-putting than being in a completely foreign one.
She thought that they’d probably all finished praying by this point. She went quickly, as she had been drinking quite a lot of juice and so did actually need it, and as she washed her hands the water seemed to wash the strangeness further into her skin, so that she felt quite ready to return to the party by the time she opened the bathroom door.
Using the banisters, she pulled herself through the hallway to the top of the stairs, having fun defying gravity, and was just about to head downstairs when she suddenly heard a noise. Clip-clop, clip-clop. It seemed quite faint at first, but she as she listened the sound grew louder and louder and stronger and stronger. It sounded an awful lot, thought Jenny, like two coconut halves being clapped together to make a sound like horses’ hooves. She moved towards the source of the sound, and had no sooner identified it as coming very decidedly from a particular bedroom, when the door burst open.
“Oh my god,” she said.
Standing in the doorway was a dark-skinned man with long white hair and a long white beard, in a brown djalaba wearing a rather over-the-top turban, flanked by a number of camels, who were looking disagreeably at the furniture.
“Uncle Eid!” she cried. “But – but you’re just a – a shitty Father Christmas knockoff made up by the aunties so us little ones didn’t feel left out when everyone was talking about Father Christmas at school! You’re not real!”
Uncle Eid looked very affronted indeed.
“Real?” he cried. “Real? Of course I’m real. Why, I’ve just come all the way across the hot, hot desert on my magic camels to give all the little girls and boys in all the world sweeties and presents! You see this camel? He’s real enough, is he not? Yes, quite! And I certainly don’t like the sound of this Father Christmas fellow, he seems like a proper upstart. Ridiculous idea, really – what next? Aunty Diwali? Mother Chanukah? Allah!”
Jenny looked at the camels. They certainly seemed real enough. And that was no fake beard; this was clearly the real deal. But – ! Gosh.
“Well,” she said, “do your camels need some water?”
“Oh no,” said Uncle Eid. “They’ll be quite alright.”
“Harrumph,” said a camel, and spat in Jenny’s face.
She snorted, and grinned. Well! If this wasn’t a turn-up for the books…!
“Well, then,” she said. “You’d better come downstairs.”
So Jenny Everywhere, and Uncle Eid, and all his camels came clip-clop, clip-clop trotting down the stairs. The camels he tied up at the bottom of the stairs and he got a great big bundle of sweets and presents for the children out of a side-bag and walked into the room looking very jolly indeed, followed by an incredibly bemused Jenny.
“Ah, Uncle Eid!” said Adam. “As-salamu-aleikum! I’ll just get the kids ready and then you can do your little talk and give out all the presents.”
And he hurried off.
“Everyone knows but me…!” said Jenny to herself in amazement.
She looked over to where the sufra had been set out and people were sitting eating rice and curry and dhaal and all sorts of lovely foods. Iskandar was there, happily chatting away to one of Aunty Ayesha’s older children. That was good. It pleased her to see him socialising. Heaven knows he needed some, holed away in that little shop of his where nobody ever came and his only company was the myriads of ancient books which provided only rather one-sided conversation.
“Hmph,” sniffed Aunty Aziza from beside her. “It’s a bad business, this Uncle Eid malarky. Giving children sweets? They should be memorising Qu’ran! This will only lead to lives of sin and iniquity! Haram, I say, haram!”
“Aunty,” said Jenny. “Giving children sweets is not haram.”
Aunty Aziza gave a loud harrumph and went off to get some more samosas.
Jenny looked over at the mat where people were sat eating. The smell of the curries intermingled, wafting over the perfumes and musks and tickling her brain in the most pleasant sort of way. She decided she should definitely go and get some food, as she realised she was very hungry. She grabbed a plate from the sideboard and was just about to sit on the sufra and eat when she saw a figure leaning against the wall. A rather frazzled-looking Firdaus emerged from the room with Uncle Eid and all the children and spotted the figure too.
“Julie!” she cried, coming over to embrace her. “What a lovely surprise! Oh my, how you’ve grown! Come in, come in, have some food!”
“Thanks, Auntie,” said Julie, looking somewhat subdued.
“Oh, I’m glad you came,” said Jenny, coming over and smiling.
Julie looked somewhat uncomfortable, like a meerkat that had suddenly found itself in a Scottish pine forest, though Jenny could see she was trying to hide that fact. This wasn’t helped by the appearance of a simmering Aunty Aziza.
“Haram,” she was growling, like some sort of racing car just about to pop off its rockers.
“Ahaha!” said Aunty Firdaus. “Julie, please help yourself. Come on, sister!” And she propelled Aunty Aziza away in the direction of the food.
Jenny laughed uncomfortably. She didn’t feel quite right. She could see Julie looking very casual about it, but she knew that Julie was probably feeling kind of shitty.
“Come and have some food,” she said. “I was just about to get some.”
“Is our grandmother about?” Julie asked. “I haven’t seen her in a while, I’d like to see how she’s getting on.”
“Oh!” said Jenny. “Yes, I think so! What with everything I hadn’t said hello to her either.”
So the two sisters ducked through elbows legs fingers cups plates to where their grandmother sat picking at a plate of curry and salad and chatting demurely with some young man from Morocco Jenny had met once or twice but couldn’t remember the name of.
“Ahh!” she said upon seeing them. “My two favourite granddaughters!”
“Hello, Dadiji,” said Jenny, giving her a peck on the cheek.
Julie and Jamila Everywhere nodded cordially at each other.
“It’s good to see you,” said their grandmother, eyes sparkling gently. She sipped her tea. “This tea is very strong, I say. Not bad, necessarily, but very strong.”
Julie’s harsh smile and Jenny’s grin met the young Moroccan man, who was speaking.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said to them. “If you’ll excuse me, Aunty, I must go get some more of this curry, it’s really delicious.”
“Ah!” she said. “You have Firdaus to thank for that. She is an excellent cook, and always has been.” As the man left, she turned to her granddaughters and spoke approvingly of him to them. “A very talented man,” she said. “Studying particle physics, of all things! Well, it goes over my head rather, but it’s very clever what they can do, you know.”
“I’m sure,” said Jenny.
Jamila Everywhere lived by herself at the top of a very tall block of flats a little way away from the old mosque, and, despite several hip replacements and a knee replacement, had seemingly no intention of ever moving out. She was a strange, fierce woman who lived by ritual and specific organisational principles, and loved with heart and soul and body. Supposedly she had once strangled a man with her handbag when he had tried to burgle her, and nobody had ever quite worked up the courage to ask her about it. Jenny had a theory she had put the rumour about herself.
“And how are your studies going, Julie?” she asked.
Julie sighed.
“Well,” she said. “You know. Much as they always have done. We’re getting somewhere at last with things, I think.”
“Excellent,” she said. “You should be more like your sister, Jenny, study hard, get a good job, not shilly-shallying about the place like you are.”
“I’m quite happy how I am, thank you very much,” said Jenny, slightly put-out.
Jamila sniffed.
“Well,” she said. “There we are.”
She took a big, strong spoonful of curry.
“That woman can really cook,” she said. “Ah, but I used to cook food like this. You should have seen me. Well, you did, I suppose, you ate a lot of it, I recall. My, but it’s a lot of work, you know. And I find it hard to stand, these days. But you know! One takes the days as they come, that’s what your Dadaji always said. And good stead it stood him in, too.”
“Yes,” said Jenny. “Yes, I suppose that’s right.”
Julie sniffed. Talk of old age made her uncomfortable, Jenny knew. Jenny socialised with too many old people too regularly to find it off-putting, but Julie was unaccustomed to it and so shied away from mortality. Jenny suddenly had a vision of her and Laura sitting together as old women, looking down at grandchildren just as her grandmother was now. Somewhere out there was a reality where they were. Somewhere out there they were happy. Somewhere out there her grandfather was still alive and Jamila was completely different. Somewhere out there her grandfather was still alive and Jamila was dead. She felt very strange and realised she had zoned out of the conversation somewhat.
“… Yes, I broke up with James,” Julie was saying.
“A pity!” said Jamila. “He seemed like such a capable young man!”
“Considering you married a man who, upon moving to the UK, managed to give himself the name of ‘Everywhere’, I don’t know that I entirely trust your definition of competence,” said Julie wryly.
Jenny saw her grandmother look slightly sad.
“Perhaps…” she said. “Perhaps.” She turned to her other granddaughter. “Are you still single?” she asked.
“Dadi!” exclaimed Jenny. “It’s not been a year yet!”
“Oh,” said Jamila, looking remorseful. “I’m sorry. One forgets these things. Yes, hm. Still you are lucky, these days. Allah only knows that if such things had been normal when I had been young… Well. No point thinking about it now, hm?”
Jenny grinned, but it was a grin where sadness was creeping in, like blood wicking up through a cloth.
“Never too late, eh?” she said.
“Well,” said Jamila. “I worry it is getting very close to too late for me.”
Jenny looked reproachfully at her grandmother.
“Don’t be so morbid, Dadi,” she said. “Carpe diem, as they say. Seize the day, you know.”
“While it’s still there to be seized,” said Julie quietly.
“Hm!” said their grandmother. “You have no food, I should see. You should get some, before it is too late.”
Jenny and Julie said goodbye to their grandmother, and headed over to the sufra, where there was still no shortage of (hot!) curry and salad and rice and dhall and naan and pitta and chickpeas and all sorts of delicious foods wafting smells across the room, filling everyone’s tongues with delicious aromatic tastes and everyone’s stomachs with warmth and content. They sat and talked, to such-and-such a person and such-and-such-a-person, and Jenny found herself engaged in a long and animated discussion with a young woman whom she had played with when she was little, who pleasingly she shared a like of this one particular television show with, so much playful debate was had there, and then Aunty Ayesha drew her into some long-winded and dreadfully entertaining anecdote about one time when she was in Turkey and had wanted to go up one particular mountain, and had, through a variety of factors largely to do with the language barrier, had gotten increasingly further away from this one mountain which she had gotten into her head the idea of climbing, and she said Tariq had gotten more and more annoyed at her – “Why not some other mountain?” he had said, but she was quite adamant that no mountain would do but this one, as she very specifically liked the look of it – and it had not been until very late at night until they reached the top, at which point both individuals were very tired indeed. (Aunty Ayesha, when she got an idea into her head, was not one for letting go of it.) And she had eaten and eaten, curry and salad, halwa and cake and baclava and tea and all sorts of the most delicious sweet things one could imagine, until she was deliciously sleepy and satisfied, and rolling between people and conversations as though in a pleasantly hazy dream.
Her father appeared behind her in that way of his that always equal parts irritated and delighted her.
“How are you getting on?” she asked.
“Absolutely wünderbar,” he said, in a mock German accent. “How are you?”
She sighed. “Happier than I’ve been in a long while,” she admitted. “It’s so nice.”
“Good,” he said. “Because Julie’s just popped outside and so has your Aunty Aziza, and I really don’t feel like going.”
“Shit,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome!” he said perkily, deliberately missing the sarcasm, and disappeared into the crowd.
She rushed outside into the gathering dusk in something of a haze. Everything seemed to blur together: yellow lights and blue darkness illuminating each other and obscuring any details. She pushed open the front door with no little trepidation, only to find Aunty Aziza and Julie leaning against the wall next to each other, both nursing cigarettes, whose smoke wafted up into the air and whose ends were bright red lights in the darkness.
“Aunty!” she cried, scandalised. “Smoking is haram!”
Aunty Aziza looked at her.
“Eh,” she said nonchalantly, shrugging in exaggerated fashion, and went on smoking.
“Is everything alright?” Jenny asked Julie.
“Oh yeah,” said Julie. “We two’ve come to an understanding.”
Aunty Aziza sniffed and Jenny smiled, which, as she wandered back into the yellow hallway to avoid the smoke, turned into a chuckle, and then a giggle, and then a proper laugh. Them two together, sitting out there smoking with camaderie expressed by matching scowls! Like a cartoon, she thought delightedly. Adam Everywhere was similarly delighted to hear of this, and the two giggled in the kitchen over the gargantuan piles of washing-up.
Jenny seized the day, even as the time for maghrib faded into that for isha’a, and hung around sympathising with Irani and Palestinian women and wishing everything weren’t so fucked up, and told a bedtime story to a horde of children who, it seemed, were having a sleepover in a room which displayed a startling lack of evidence of the camels which not so long earlier had been trampling through it – it was a real doozy, about her great battle against the Beastmaster – and listened to the soft voice of her grandmother talking liltingly about her childhood home, marvelling at the distance and the closeness of it to her, and did a quite startling amount of washing up, and managed to avoid being there for several prayers, and, at last, when everybody had gone home or gone to bed except for her and her father and Aunty Firdaus, she said goodbye, and Aunty Firdaus gesticulated joyously and wildly, vocally and physically, in her gratification and pleasure at seeing them, and she and her father walked out of the house and down the road together, arm in arm.
“Look at the stars,” said Jenny. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Yes,” said the ageing voice of Adam. “So very, very beautiful. Lights in the sky, close enough to touch but so incredibly, incredibly far away. The most beautiful thing in the whole wide world.”
Jenny studied her father’s face, turned upwards to look at the stars. There was a strange look upon it, a sad look, a look she thought she knew and had seen many times on her own face when she looked in the mirror.
“Your mother loved the stars,” said Adam Everywhere. “She said that’s why she flew, to be closer to them. She took me up in her plane, once, at night, and the wind was so cold on my nose and ears I thought I might cry. It was the most incredible feeling, though. Flying! As free as anything, as free as the sky! And the stars, so bright, over us like a great glittering black-and-white blanket! Oh, you should have seen us. Your mother’s face was so beautiful in the starlight, up there flying.”
Jenny breathed the cold, fresh air, and imagined being a hundred miles up by the stars with her mother. She wished she remembered what her mother looked like, and didn’t just know from the photos. There was a flatness, a lifelessness, to photos.
“You really miss her,” she said.
“On a night like this, when the air is cold and the stars are right,” said her father. “She was my first love, after all.”
Jenny raised an eyebrow.
“Pamela was a mistake,” said Adam. “Well, you know how awful she is to Julie. I never really loved her. I don’t know that I ever even nearly loved her.”
Jenny snuggled her head into the warmth of her father’s shoulder.
“Do you love Laura?” he asked, quietly.
“More than anything in the world,” said Jenny, and her voice was awfully subdued.
He stopped, and hugged her. He was awfully warm. He smelt like cardamon and ginger and cumin and garam masala and onions. His jumper prickled at her face. She came very close to crying then, but stopped herself.
“It’ll get easier,” he said.
“I don’t want it to,” said Jenny. “I want to stay hurting for ever and ever and ever, so that I can remember her. But she’s slipping away and away, out of my memory, and every day I forget something about her, something little or something big, and it feels like I’m losing her all over again.”
Adam Everywhere handed his daughter a handkerchief, and gently rubbed her eyes.
“That’s the way it goes,” he said. “But it’ll all be alright in the end.”
Something about the twinkling of the stars seemed to say that they agreed.
To The Shifter Chronicles